My Non-Highlight Reel

Our baby boy is due one month from tomorrow.  Now that we are about 4 weeks out, I feel like time is flying by.  I don't mind for this time to go quickly, but the moment I have him, I will want time to stop.

This week has been a wonderful gift.  The weather has been unseasonably warm...hot even.  We finally broke down and turned the air on yesterday.  I cannot express how much getting to be outside has helped the mood in our home.  Everyone gets giddy when I announce it is time to go out.  And it is wonderful to just be able to head right out without messing with coats and hats and socks and all the rest.

A good friend of mine and I were recently talking about kids and mom stuff and meals and everything in between.  At one point she said something like, "I feel like one of the hardest things about being a mom is that I am comparing my real-life to everyone else's highlight reel."

I agree to some extent.

For me, I have struggled with wondering how everyone else seems to be doing it all; getting everything done.  Cause I'm not.

But the Lord has been teaching me, probably over the past 9 months, that everyone is not doing it all.  Everyone is making choices:  prioritizing what they want to do, selecting what they want to get done, and making (whether consciously or not) decisions about where they are investing.

As much as I am tempted to hear that every other mom is doing more and doing better, I am grateful that the Lord keeps reminding me, no one is spending quality time with their husband, fostering their relationship with the Lord, playing with children, educating their children, making time for fun outings, cleaning house, staying on top of the laundry, caring for pets, having babies, participating in ministry, cooking from scratch, completing crafty projects, and sleeping all at the same time.  No one.

Personally, I am only doing a few of those things.  I mean, I just recently created a new laundry system so that, since we can't seem to get the laundry put away, at least we can find what we are looking for.  There are baskets for adult towels, kid towels, adult clothes, kid clothes, a separate basket for kid socks (which were always so difficult to find!), and kitchen linens.  And then I had to go buy another one for the overflow.  Honestly, I don't really see it as a fault, it is just our reality.  Laundry is low on the totem pole these days.  When Shane realized the beauty of the new system he said, "Yes! Now we never have to put it away again."  Sigh.  And smile.  Whatever.  At least it works for us.

I just keep praying that I am prioritizing the right things.  I certainly don't always choose right.  And in the midst of it all, there are things that simply have to be done:  I change diapers and clean up after sick children.  I plunge toilets and wonder why my phone doesn't have service (again).  I wash dishes, realize I have to make dinner (again), and try to get the stains out.  Thankfully, there is grace.

Here is what I mean by that:  grace doesn't mean that my phone miraculously starts working.  Or that the dishwasher is fixed instantaneously.  But it does mean that as we do our part, God is gracious to walk us through it.  Shane went to the store.  And God graciously provided us the means for me to get new phone service.  Shane went to another store.  And our landlord let him pick out a new dishwasher.  Grace.  It's grace that keeps me from needing our reality to be a highlight reel.  I'm learning.  We can just be us...